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Saturday, May 15

Today, I’m happy to bring you a blog tour for Gregory A. Boyd, author of Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now.

Gregory A. Boyd is the founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN, and founder and president of Christus Victor Ministries. He was a professor of theology at Bethel College (St. Paul, MN) for sixteen years where he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor. Greg is a graduate of the University of Minnesota (BA), Yale Divinity School (MDiv), and Princeton Theological Seminary (PhD).

Greg is a national and international speaker at churches, colleges, conferences, and retreats and has appeared on numerous radio and television shows. He has also authored and co-authored eighteen books prior to Present Perfect, including The Myth of a Christian Religion, The Myth of a Christian Nation, The Jesus Legend (with Paul Eddy), Seeing Is Believing, Repenting of Religion, and his international bestseller Letters from a Skeptic.A “Holy Habit” that will change your life!

Discover: How to pray continually • What it means to “take every thought captive” • How to wake up to God’s ever-present love.

God is closer to you than the air you breathe. He is present in every given moment. Wake up to His presence! Turn off the mental chatter that keeps you from seeing His glory. Embrace the holy habit of inviting God’s presence into your life and be transformed! Wake Up to God’s Presence!

We long to be transformed. Yet, our minds are filled with endless trivia and self-centered chatter. To-do lists. Worries about the past. Speculation about the future. We forget to live in the present moment…and to invite God to be with us there.

After reading classic contemplative authors Brother Lawrence, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, and Frank Laubach, Gregory Boyd longed to experience the presence of God for himself. For two decades, he’s attempted to implement the practice of the presence of God in his own life … sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

What he’s learned as a fellow pilgrim on his spiritual journey can help you find true spiritual transformation as you begin to practice the discipline of inviting God into every moment.

“I’ve become absolutely convinced that remaining aware of God’s presence moment-by-moment is the single most important task in the life of every follower of Jesus,” Boyd writes. “I’m convinced this challenge is implied in our commitment to surrender our life to Christ, for the only real life we have to surrender to him is the one we live moment-by-moment.”

Where did you get the idea for the book?

My passion for Present Perfect arose out of my passion for the discipline it’s about – the practice of the presence of God. Though I’ve always struggled with this discipline, as I readily admit in this book, I’ve come to believe it not only is the most important spiritual discipline. It actually expresses the very essence of what it means to live under the reign of God.

This book began as a series of essays I wrote almost six years ago during one of the worst and most prolonged episodes of the “dark night of the soul” I’ve ever experienced.

During this time, I recommitted myself to the practice of the presence of God and writing these essays helped me reorient my life around this discipline. I decided against publishing the essays six years ago, however, because I felt I hadn’t attained a level of maturity in this discipline that would justify me being a spokesperson for it.

I have since learned that God can use imperfect pilgrims as much as mature masters, which allowed me to rework the essays and publish them. (I’m still very glad I waited six years. However, since I’ve learned much in the intervening period, I feel that the essays are much better as a result.)What are the major themes of the book?

Life is nothing more than a series of present moments strung together. So, to live a life committed to Christ means we need to commit each present moment to him. This involves remaining aware of, and surrendered to, the loving presence of Christ moment-by-moment.

As we learn to do this, we wake up to the wonder of God’s love, the beauty of the world, and opportunities to be used by God that we’d otherwise miss. As the subtitle of the book says, we wake up to the Kingdom in the NOW, and only in the NOW. What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

A deeper desire and greater capacity to be fully alive in the present moment, aware of God’s presence, surrendered to His will and led by His Spirit.

About Lynn...

Through many hardships, trials, and health issues, I have learned to depend entirely on the Lord for everything. After being diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2000, the Lord whispered to my heart to write for Him. So, now, out of a great passion to reach others, I obey His call.